I wanted to maintain some sort of sequence in my ramble, even though I have been explicit that no such chronology should be expected. I will take a wild jump through space and time and ramble some more about the present.
It is a tumultuous time of my life. Facing some of the toughest challenges life can throw. I just hope I have the courage to overcome them. A tough little kid came out of 4/7 Tagore Place. Not a nut that can crack so fast. Thus said I will totally leave the current circumstances, which of course will make for another bout of “phire to jaoa, jay na je aar shekhane”. Yet, this strangle-hold of my nerves, has also given an opportunity to first dip my feet in another ocean. That touch, friends, was ecstatic. I could not help but dive in. My main quest was relief – I haven’t quite gotten that. I have just discovered more questions than I have found answers for; and those questions have spawned more questions. I will recall one of several evenings in Tagore Place, when we did not have electricity. This was summer time, seething hot, just before the monsoons. These power cuts would last hours at a time. And when it came back, and the lights all blinked up and the fans gave out their first groans and started off to rotate a collective “Eshe Gechhe! (It has come)” would echo from most households.
Such an evening, when I was not studying under a candle, or a kerosene lamp, there was no point in sitting inside in the gloom. We came out with a couple of chairs and placed them on the lawn. Baba and Ma sat there while we spread a coarse piece of hand-woven cloth called “Sataranchi” on the concrete path right in front of the house. This time, there was a massive outage. Not one artificial light could be seen anywhere. It was a new-moon night, and the sky was crystal clear. The enormous sky strewn with millions of billions of stars making it a spectacular display of sparkling diamonds. The white inter-stellar gas of one of the spiral arms of the milky-way was plainly visible.
That was when Baba made the comment, looking ways up in the sky:
“Have you heard of Albert Einstein?”
The question was thrown to me. Of course I knew who Einstein was. Well, not really a whole lot. But he was a famous scientist.
On that day, I listened rapt in attention to every-word my Father said. It was long ago, I faintly remember the mention of relativity and such words that go with it. But when he said, most of what you are seeing up there – probably happened billions of years ago and that the star that I was seeing may have already died. How does a star die? I mean they have been there always as far as I have seen. Never really cared. But that question somehow made a comeback a few years ago. The turmoil had started. Some events devastated me – changed my vision and trajectory forever. Duly, my father consulted an “Astrologer”, who sent in expensive remedies for my problems. And I had to ask, how could these things work? A stone on my right finger – how on earth relate to Jupiter, who in turn can alter the inevitable disaster I was foreseeing. The research had to be done. And off I went, starting with Carl Sagan’s Cosmos. By now, I have covered scores of books all related to the Universe and its birth – and life’s evolution. I have quite unfortunately reached the conclusion that the ring that was supposed to have altered the course of my life’s nose-diving trajectory did not stand a chance. My prediction has unfortunately turned out to be true.
So, now friends, I will have to advise you not to read those books. “Lekha Pora Kore je, Gari Chapa Pore She”. Literally, they completely screw up your belief, faith system to the degree that you are at a loss about what to believe. And even as I advise you, I am reading Cosmic catastrophes by J. Craig Wheeler. I absolutely do not intend to dispense with my newfound insights; the fear of being called another patronizing whack-job of mad-science, is too real. Besides, who cares?
Yet there are questions; questions that make me feel an urgent need for answers. I read “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins a few months back. That just re-doubled my urgency for seeking some very tangible answers. Yet, I could not frame the questions that needed to be asked to extract those answers. Till, I read “Just Six Numbers” by Martin Rees. This book has been around for a while now. Somewhere right in his concluding remarks Dr. Rees, places the most fundamental question that I have come across in my life so far. As any man who is humbled by the vastness of his own knowledge (and has arrived at the realization how little such vast knowledge actually is) would, Dr. Rees leaves the question un-answered. I repeat that question:
WHY IS THERE SOMETHING AT ALL, INSTEAD OF NOTHING?
Sleepless in Denver
Here I am writing a lot of junk again.
It is a tumultuous time of my life. Facing some of the toughest challenges life can throw. I just hope I have the courage to overcome them. A tough little kid came out of 4/7 Tagore Place. Not a nut that can crack so fast. Thus said I will totally leave the current circumstances, which of course will make for another bout of “phire to jaoa, jay na je aar shekhane”. Yet, this strangle-hold of my nerves, has also given an opportunity to first dip my feet in another ocean. That touch, friends, was ecstatic. I could not help but dive in. My main quest was relief – I haven’t quite gotten that. I have just discovered more questions than I have found answers for; and those questions have spawned more questions. I will recall one of several evenings in Tagore Place, when we did not have electricity. This was summer time, seething hot, just before the monsoons. These power cuts would last hours at a time. And when it came back, and the lights all blinked up and the fans gave out their first groans and started off to rotate a collective “Eshe Gechhe! (It has come)” would echo from most households.
Such an evening, when I was not studying under a candle, or a kerosene lamp, there was no point in sitting inside in the gloom. We came out with a couple of chairs and placed them on the lawn. Baba and Ma sat there while we spread a coarse piece of hand-woven cloth called “Sataranchi” on the concrete path right in front of the house. This time, there was a massive outage. Not one artificial light could be seen anywhere. It was a new-moon night, and the sky was crystal clear. The enormous sky strewn with millions of billions of stars making it a spectacular display of sparkling diamonds. The white inter-stellar gas of one of the spiral arms of the milky-way was plainly visible.
That was when Baba made the comment, looking ways up in the sky:
“Have you heard of Albert Einstein?”
The question was thrown to me. Of course I knew who Einstein was. Well, not really a whole lot. But he was a famous scientist.
On that day, I listened rapt in attention to every-word my Father said. It was long ago, I faintly remember the mention of relativity and such words that go with it. But when he said, most of what you are seeing up there – probably happened billions of years ago and that the star that I was seeing may have already died. How does a star die? I mean they have been there always as far as I have seen. Never really cared. But that question somehow made a comeback a few years ago. The turmoil had started. Some events devastated me – changed my vision and trajectory forever. Duly, my father consulted an “Astrologer”, who sent in expensive remedies for my problems. And I had to ask, how could these things work? A stone on my right finger – how on earth relate to Jupiter, who in turn can alter the inevitable disaster I was foreseeing. The research had to be done. And off I went, starting with Carl Sagan’s Cosmos. By now, I have covered scores of books all related to the Universe and its birth – and life’s evolution. I have quite unfortunately reached the conclusion that the ring that was supposed to have altered the course of my life’s nose-diving trajectory did not stand a chance. My prediction has unfortunately turned out to be true.
So, now friends, I will have to advise you not to read those books. “Lekha Pora Kore je, Gari Chapa Pore She”. Literally, they completely screw up your belief, faith system to the degree that you are at a loss about what to believe. And even as I advise you, I am reading Cosmic catastrophes by J. Craig Wheeler. I absolutely do not intend to dispense with my newfound insights; the fear of being called another patronizing whack-job of mad-science, is too real. Besides, who cares?
Yet there are questions; questions that make me feel an urgent need for answers. I read “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins a few months back. That just re-doubled my urgency for seeking some very tangible answers. Yet, I could not frame the questions that needed to be asked to extract those answers. Till, I read “Just Six Numbers” by Martin Rees. This book has been around for a while now. Somewhere right in his concluding remarks Dr. Rees, places the most fundamental question that I have come across in my life so far. As any man who is humbled by the vastness of his own knowledge (and has arrived at the realization how little such vast knowledge actually is) would, Dr. Rees leaves the question un-answered. I repeat that question:
WHY IS THERE SOMETHING AT ALL, INSTEAD OF NOTHING?
Sleepless in Denver
Here I am writing a lot of junk again.
